


As Simple as BCD

by Quinara



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, Gen, commentfic, season: b6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-03
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 03:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/pseuds/Quinara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment in an AU 'Normal Again', where Cordelia is a Summers sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Simple as BCD

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xlivvielockex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xlivvielockex/gifts).



> Written for The Awesome Ladies Ficathon and Art-a-thon 2012 in response to xlivvielockex's prompt: _BTVS/ATS - Buffy Summers and Cordelia Chase - What if Buffy and Cordy WERE REALLY sisters (with really different hair)?_

"How could you say that to her?" Cordy demanded, crossing her arms as she stared down her twin. "Tell her she's not real?"

Buffy, in her fevered state, simply stared back. "She's not," she replied petulantly, eyes blank and hard in her pale face. "Don't you remember how it's meant to be? You, me, Mom and Dad, picture perfect. Dawn..." Now Buffy just looked pained again, rolling over on her side to face the wall. "She doesn't fit. None of this fits."

Rubbing the itch in her eyes, Cordy wasn't sure what to do. She could almost remember it, picture perfection, though her own image of their family had three daughters. It hadn't been that way for a long time, though. Not since the divorce - and high school. Not since Cordy had left this town behind.

Dawn hadn't helped, of course. It had been tense enough in the house before Cordy had been the one to mistrust what the monks had done. That had been months of uneasy, fresh enmity between the two Summers girls with the best relationship; months of Buffy on her slaygirl high horse with her speeches and her sympathy; then the death and more of it. The quiet, empty house that Cordy had to keep and clean alone while Dawn dumped her for Spike. The uneasy, steadily earned respect. The new Summers order.

And then they'd got their other third back - only she'd become a strange, pale reflection of what she'd once dared to be.

How had it ended up like this? Looking around the room, Buffy's bedroom, Cordy thought it looked pretty much the same as it had in high school. Her old single bed, the curse of a three bedroom house, was still made up just inside the doorway - its twin by the window so Buffy could sneak out. As Cordelia sat down on her old duvet she remembered all the awkward silences there had ever been, on the nights after the Bronze when Buffy had hung with Willow and Xander and laughed, after Homecoming, after Mom had got sick and Buffy had come home from college, Cordy from LA - fired by Angel and generally a failure.

How had things switched around so much? Cordy wasn't meant to be the good twin; she didn't know how to do it.

"Look, Buffy..." Cordy tried, pulling all of those memories back into her mind, trying to be good. She wondered if it would have been better, more normal, if she'd moved back in here after the resurrection, rather than staying in their mom's room, which had somehow seemed the less horrific place to sleep. Going by high school, it probably wouldn't have helped. "I know you've got trauma or whatever," she tried again, remembering when it had all fallen apart. "I know we put you in that place." And she still felt guilty sometimes, but... "But - come _on_! You were right and we were wrong. It's nuts, but vampires are real." They knew this. "I can't believe you'd rather live somewhere everyone thinks you're deluded than here in Sunnydale, where you get to be right and hold it against me."

Her twin sniffled, and it pulled all the heartstrings Cordy wished her family didn't have access to. "It doesn't fit," Buffy muttered again, feverishly, almost like a question.

"Have you ever thought that _you_ don't fit?" she shot back, on a roll, trying to make her sister laugh. "I mean, do we have to talk about the hair again?" How many times had they had this argument? "Summers women are not natural blondes and we don't do natural curl. You're the freak in this family. Possibly part-howler monkey."

"Cordy, please..." Buffy was definitely crying now; her voice sounded all moist and gooey. She had to be feeling guilty - hypocritical, maybe, for all the times she'd called Cordy cruel and heartless over Dawn. "Will you just leave me alone?"

"No," Cordelia replied, if only because she'd never backed down from a territory argument in her life. Cordelia Summers would never be told where to go. "I'm not going anywhere until you quit whining." Was it tough love time? It felt like it was. "Seriously. What the hell would Mom think?"

With a startled sob, Buffy curled up, still facing the window. Cordy immediately felt bad.

"I'm sorry, OK?" she said more softly, looking down at her hands, ashamed "I..." She hadn't meant to snap. But she really wasn't good at this, all this family stuff. It was why she'd left town. "Maybe I _should_ go." Clearly she wasn't helping.

She stood up to leave, resigned to always suck at this, to not work in this family. It was then, however, against the sound of Buffy's sobs, that Cordelia caught sight of the antidote mug abandoned on the night stand, and she realised what was going on.

This was why Spike had looked so miserable when she'd barged past him on the landing, Cordy realised. This was why Buffy was driving them away. "So this is the plan, huh?" she asked her sister, fairly certain she knew the answer. "Shut us all out so you can die here happily in your misery? Not have to care?"

For a moment, Buffy stopped crying. It was like she was listening.

"Well, screw that," Cordy told her, taking the decision to kick back on her old bed and settle in. No, she wasn't going anywhere. Really, she never should have gone. "We're stuck with you, so you're stuck with us." Reaching down, she found an ancient Cosmopolitan magazine lost where it had fallen behind the bedside table. "I'm not leaving till you drink your medicine - and if you try and hurt me, I will scream this god damn house down." Now, there was a line she hadn't said in a while. "Oh," she added, flicking through some quaint old Cosmo sex tips. "And I will hum."

It took about twenty minutes. In the Summers twins bedroom wars that was actually a new record. (Score one, Summers C.)


End file.
